Hi,
Mum was diagnosed with Alzheimer's several months ago, she's still in the early stage. For several months now she has had an obsession about the heating in the house, always feeling the radiators and saying that it's cold, and asking Dad to put the central heating on (they moved house a year ago and she doesn't know how the heating works). In reality the temperature is fine, it's far too hot to put the heating on. This is leading to a lot of stress and frustration for Dad. He has tried to gently say that he'll put the heating on, but then not do it, but still she persists. He has tried actually putting the heating on for a while but this is not really an option as the house gets swelteringly hot.
She does tend to feel the cold but we have suggested to her that she should put on an extra layer of clothing, but she won't. Does anyone have any ideas for any strategies we could try to deal with this? One idea we had was to put a fake switch somewhere that we could tell her she could use to give the temperature a boost (a sort of placebo switch). We're not sure that this would convince her though.
Mum was diagnosed with Alzheimer's several months ago, she's still in the early stage. For several months now she has had an obsession about the heating in the house, always feeling the radiators and saying that it's cold, and asking Dad to put the central heating on (they moved house a year ago and she doesn't know how the heating works). In reality the temperature is fine, it's far too hot to put the heating on. This is leading to a lot of stress and frustration for Dad. He has tried to gently say that he'll put the heating on, but then not do it, but still she persists. He has tried actually putting the heating on for a while but this is not really an option as the house gets swelteringly hot.
She does tend to feel the cold but we have suggested to her that she should put on an extra layer of clothing, but she won't. Does anyone have any ideas for any strategies we could try to deal with this? One idea we had was to put a fake switch somewhere that we could tell her she could use to give the temperature a boost (a sort of placebo switch). We're not sure that this would convince her though.